The other Yugoslavian election

History was made in Yugoslavia with the fall of Slobodan Milosevic on 5 October. His successor, Vojislav Kostunica, has been hailed as a man the west can do business with. But he also a nationalist. So the world will be watching his handling of Kosovo, where the avid demand for independence is the only common thread among the various Albanian parties competing for power in local elections on 28 October.

by Jean-Arnault Dérens

United Nations administrator Bernard Kouchner had serious misgivings about allowing polling in Kosovo for the Yugoslav federal elections on 24 September. In the event, the Serbs in the province were able to cast their votes. The Kosovar Albanians took no part in the poll. It served only served to remind them that, under UN Resolution 1244, Kosovo is still part of the Yugoslav Federation. Conversely, the Serbs are extremely unlikely to vote in Kosovo’s municipal poll on 28 October, when the province will elect its own local authorities.

In any case, over 200,000 displaced Serbs, Montenegrins and Muslim Slavs will be unable to vote, while the 100,000 or so still living in the province support a boycott. And the election campaign itself has been marred by violence. On 18 August a powerful explosion rocked a building in the centre of Pristina belonging to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which houses several ethnic minority parties. The prime target was the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), representing the province’s Muslim Slavs. They feel increasingly under threat. And so do the Turks, who have been told to identify with the Albanians or get out.

Some members of ethnic minorities have registered to vote despite these threats. They make no secret of their support for the Democratic League of Kosovo, led by Ibrahim Rugova, which they hope will counter the influence of the Albanian extremists. Some Albanian-speaking Gypsies, particularly among the Ashkali minority, share this view. But most Roma still in Kosovo have not registered. In any case, the vast majority of the province’s Roma, Serb and Montenegrin communities have been forced to flee to Montenegro or Serbia (1). In Serbia, the Belgrade regime has prevented OSCE officials from encouraging displaced persons to register as voters. But even in Montenegro, where the authorities facilitate the work of the OSCE, only a tiny minority of refugees have bothered to register.

In Kosovo itself, almost the whole Serb community is behind the boycott. Despite the deep political divides among its 100,000 members, almost all Serb leaders agree they cannot go to the polls as long as the Serbs in Kosovo have no guarantee of their security. Oliver Ivanovic, head of the Serb National Council in Mitrovica, took this position from the start. He advocates the establishment of a tiny Serb republic of Kosovska Mitrovica under his control. But moderate Serbs who support the Serb National Council in Gracanica and the Orthodox Church have taken the same line.

The Church itself is in a tricky position. Oscillating between participation and boycott of the co-management institutions set up by the international administration, it has confused Serb public opinion and can no longer rely on grassroots support. Ivanovic, however, is solidly backed by almost all the 50,000 Serbs living in northern Mitrovica and the neighbouring towns of Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavic.

Yet Leposavic, a town in the far north of Kosovo with an exclusively Serbian population, is something of an exception. It is the only place where there has been an explicit call for Serbs to take part in the October elections. It came from the Coalition for Leposavic, an alliance of Serbian parties opposed to Milosevic, which argued that only cooperation with the international institutions could ensure a future for Serbs in Kosovo. According to unofficial figures released by the OSCE in July, only 400 Serbs had registered on the electoral roll for the whole of Kosovo, and 300 of them live in Leposavic.

Father Sava, spokesman for the Orthodox diocese, makes no attempt to conceal his despair. “International troops have been deployed in Kosovo for over a year, yet Serbs are still being attacked every day. The inability to deal with Albanian extremism is a bonus for Serb extremists.” After the Serb boycott of the elections, fresh talks on the constitutional status of the Serbian people are inevitable. While the enclaved villages seemed doomed in the near future, the north Mitrovica region is rapidly moving away from the rest of Kosovo.

On the Albanian side, 25 parties have officially entered the election. But the contest will be between the three largest groups: the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), led by Ibrahim Rugova; the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), led by Hashim Thaci, comprising many former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), set up by Ramush Haradinaj, a former KLA commander.

Since returning to Kosovo in July, Rugova has confined himself to participating in the institutions created by the international administration and condemning political violence. For the rest, he has said nothing. His party seems struck by political paralysis, and leading members like Milazim Krasniqi have left in disgust. Some commentators, however, think Rugova may be playing a waiting game, allowing the former KLA guerrillas to make the running and hoping to cash in on their mistakes at the elections.

In fact, the opinion polls show the LDK clearly in the lead. Rugova can reasonably expect mass endorsement of his role as a leader symbolising years of struggle against Serbian authority. But he has very little room for manuvre. In a number of towns in Kosovo, the LDK has practically been forced underground. In Decani, in the west of the province, its premises have been bombed several times and the party seems unable to maintain a public existence despite the presence of Nato troops. Worse still, Haki Imeri, the head of the LDK branch in Srbica, was assassinated last November. Local LDK activists say they are being terrorised and deprived of humanitarian aid by KLA sympathisers, who hold all the key positions on the municipal council, although it is theoretically controlled by the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) (2).

Former KLA members - including those who rushed to join its ranks at the last minute - have imposed a reign of intolerance on the province. Officially, the KLA dissolved itself last year. But the power of the group of ultra-nationalist ideologists who controlled it is undiminished. Its basis is both political and military.

Politically it rests on the PDK and the “provisional government” proclaimed by Hashim Thaci in Albania last April, which appointed local authorities in towns throughout Kosovo. Unmik’s civilian administrators often had no choice but to come to terms with the former guerrillas, who have succeeded in eliminating potential competitors and hold a virtual monopoly of power in the municipalities. Officially, the PDK condemns political violence. But its leaders are frequently implicated in physical liquidation of former supporters deemed to be “collaborators” and in the harassment of national minorities.

The KLA’s main military prop is the Kosovo Protection Corps (TMK), which is officially a civilian body. In fact, it consists of 5,000 former KLA guerrillas and is organised along military lines. Its six regional commands correspond exactly to the former operational zones of the KLA, and it misses no opportunity to advertise its continuity with the former guerrilla army. The KLA’s intelligence services do not appear to have been disbanded either, and the TMK maintains close links with the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army (UCPMB), which conducts sporadic operations in three towns in southern Serbia.

The KLA has paid no more than lip-service to disarmament. A number of tough operations by international troops have resulted in the seizure of whole arsenals of weapons, notably in Drenica. The international administration refused to incorporate former KLA fighters into the new Kosovo Police Service (KPS) en bloc, but many managed to join as individuals. They are clearly cooperating with the former KLA’s military police (PU), another organisation that has been officially dissolved but remains in operation. In rural areas, in particular, its members willingly undertake the more sordid tasks, such as enforcing payment of the illegal taxes levied by the Thaci “government”.

Many members of the TMK and PU, as well as former KLA fighters employed in the international police force, have been directly implicated in political and ethnic violence. Rexhep Selimi, minister of public order in Thaci’s provisional government, has kept control of the PU and of Shik, the KLA’s civilian intelligence service. The latter is probably receiving technical support from Albania’s national intelligence service, also called Shik, which remains loyal to former president Sali Berisha.

Crime syndicates at work

In terms of ultra-nationalism, the PDK faces competition from the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo (LKCK), a small group that has not officially renounced the Albanian version of Marxism-Leninism. But the main threat to its unity comes from conflict between the crime syndicates.

In February fire raged for days in the huge Ramiz-Sadiku sports complex in Pristina, whose basement level houses prosperous shopping malls controlled by “Commander Remi” (real name Rustem Mustafa). Remi is suspected of running rackets in Pristina and is said to be in conflict with Thaci over control of the petrol stations springing up on all Kosovo’s main roads (3).

Ramush Haradinaj, commander of the Dukagjin sector in western Kosovo during the fighting, has also kept control of his native region, though he has since become deputy to Agim Ceku, commander in chief of the TMK. Haradinaj controls the borders with Albania and Montenegro from Prizren to Pec. From this strategic position, he supervises the illegal traffic in oil and cigarettes. The origin of the political rift that prompted him to set up the AAK may well lie in conflict between the crime syndicates. Both Haradinaj and Mustafa have narrowly escaped assassination attempts in recent months.

The spread of organised crime, and the carving up of the province by “patriots” applying Stalinist methods, is facilitated by the total absence of political debate. Not a single Albanian intellectual, newspaper or party dares criticise the former KLA, condemn the persecution of minorities, or call nationalist dogma into question. Rugova and Thaci have no ideological differences. They are simply engaged in a power struggle. They share the declared aim of independence for Kosovo and continue hypocritically to condemn violence while refraining from the slightest gesture that would loosen the ideological straitjacket in which Kosovo is held fast. Even the courageous condemnation of violence by journalist Veton Surroi last August failed to provoke a change of heart.

As for the international administration, it has come to terms with “reverse ethnic cleansing” and allowed crime syndicates and clandestine networks trained in the Enver Hodja school of maoism to take control of the province. For years Kosovo lived in the strange world of an “official” society controlled by the authorities in Belgrade and a “parallel” Albanian civil society. It is now experiencing a new cleavage between the “official” society administered by Unmik, abounding in fine phrases about democracy and the protection of minorities, and the real society controlled by the political and criminal mafia.

The international protectorate has freed Albanian political parties from responsibility for formulating policies, since Unmik takes all the important decisions. Their only platform is independence. Consequently, they can stand out only by being more demagogic than their opponents. As the editor-in-chief of the independent daily Koha Ditore realistically observes, “the UN troops are trapped between two illusions: that of the Serbs, who are certain they will return to the province, and that of the Albanians, who are convinced they will obtain independence” (4).